Father Geek here with our latest report from the Pacific Islands and Moon Yun's ace reporter Albert Lanier... Well, the start of this report sounds very familar to me... several years ago Harry and I were attending the SXSW film fest here in Austin Texas and a film was showing at a brand new venue (not yet completed) in the downtown's seedy rundown western warehouse district that we wanted to see. That venue was "The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema", we'd never heard of it, but we braved the trek over anyway. It was located on the second floor of what was once a warehouse turned parking garage... we get there and there was NO air con (remember this is Texas) and the seats are rented folding chairs (small ones at that)crowded together, and bales of Hay are stacked against the walls for soundproofing. It was weird, hot, smelly, uncomfortable, and overcrowded. Not alot of fun! But we went back and so did other real film fans.(the programing demanded that) The physical plant improved rapidly and became both ours and Austin's favorite theater-cafe-bar-special events location, revitalizing the area of town it located in... showing films that could be seen NOWHERE else... Congrats Honolulu!!! Your new venue will grow to be THE place to experience film... Iffffff you support it.
SAPPHIC ROMANCE OPENS CINEMA PARADISE FILM FESTIVAL
by Albert Lanier
The Hong Kong drama BUTTERFLY, directed by filmmaker Yan Yan Mak, opened the fourth edition of the startlingly new and redesigned Cinema Paradise Film Festival (CPFF) in Honolulu, Hawaii on Friday, June 24.
Just what do I mean by new? For starters, a new location in Downtown more specifically Hotel Street which decades ago was a hot spot for adult fun and which has degenerated over the years into adult disrepute. This is despite the fact that there are at least a couple of good restaurants on Hotel and that the street was seen as badly in need of an urban makeover.
CPFF directors Chris Kahunahana and Sergio Goes must have reserves of courage somewhere in their bodies since they will be screening films from June 24-30th not in a theater, but a loft-like space complete with brick walls to give it that seems-like-Manhattan-but-we're-still-in Hawaii look. Goes and Kahunahana must also have big brass ones as well since they have signed a deal to convert the space-located on 49 N. Hotel Street- into Next Door, the new home of Cinema Paradise and slated to be a movie lounge complete with a bar which I am happy to tell you booze-happy movie fans out there was open and operating on Opening night.
Though the idea of attending a film festival on Hotel Street is about as captivating as watching a marathon of Andy Warhol movies, I did dig the new scene even though it was raw and unfinished (so incomplete that they were working on installing toilets in a back room throughout opening night) so we will have to wait and see what the final environs of the Next Door cinema lounge will look like.
It was quite a night. Dozens of people sitting on folding chairs while others were standing near the bar hugging the left wall of the soon-to-be-lounge and a new others were sitting on the type of cushioned sofas you would see in your average night clubs on a wooden platform just a couple steps up from the ground.
A screen was hung above a stage with the usual black drapes in the background where performers such as J Boogie (who performed at the opening night party there) rocked the house. A few candles sat in holders on either side of the wall creating a lighting effect more medieval (like something out of Ridley Scott's KINGDOM OF HEAVEN) than post-modern.
The ambience created (okay, maybe manufactured) was terrific.
Too bad, the opening feature wasn't.
BUTTERFLY revolves thirtyish Flavia who married with a daughter and teaches at an all girls school in Hong Kong. Her life seems pleasant if not routine.
Into Flavia's life comes Xiao Ye, a 23 year old singer and musician (though she tells Flavia that she's 18 at first) who when we first see her is contentedly munching away on some snack in a grocery store when Flavia is shopping. A store employee asks Xiao Ye what she's doing (since the young women is eating food she hasn't paid for) Flavia comes to her aid and pays for her snacks. The two then have lunch at cafe in the city. Xiao Ye says she has been thrown out of her friend Rosa's apartment where she was previously staying. Xiao Ye's only stated ambition at this point is to eat-constantly. Flavia tells her that she is married and has a daughter
It becomes glaringly obvious at this point that these are not two women chatting and engaging in meaningless girl talk but two people drawn to each other, physically and sexually attracted to one another. Thus is the central story of BUTTERFLY set up. Xiao Ye is unapologetically crazy about Flavia, Flavia lusts after Xiao Ye but she is too scared and too haunted by her past-a previous schoolgirl romance with schoolmate Jin that ended up being torn apart by cowardice and fear-to fully commit to Xiao Ye and end her marriage with the generally affable Ming.
Director Yan Yan Mak makes heavy use of flashbacks in BUTTERFLY crosscutting the main story with scenes from Flavia's past as well as throwing into the main storyline two lesbian teenagers in Flavia's class who turn to her for help when their relatives discover their love for each other and aim to pry the two apart.
BUTTERFLY is a self-consciously arty and overly stylized film. Mak often throws in Super 8 or 16 mm like shots of her protagonists as well as of young Flavia and her lover Jin sometimes during the flashbacks. Often, this overweening "art school/film school" approach can be irritating and off putting but it does work here as does the film's overall cinematography in creating tableaus that entice the eye and put visual meat on the bones of the story.
However, the film's overarching look cannot atone or make up for its pedestrian main story. BUTTERFLY's script written by Mak seems far too loaded and rigged with a lack of any substantial dramatic conflict whether from within Flavia or from without. Despite a decent performance from Josie Ho, Flavia is too much of a coward, too untrue to herself and to others to merit respect or sympathy.
No, BUTTERFLY is not a film that arrives at its choices honestly but has already predetermined its decisions and tries to keep them from the audience only to spring them near the end with appropriate melodramatic hue and cry.
Too bad, this could have been a good picture. The flashbacks are infinitely more compelling and fascinating and feature good performances from Yat Ning Chan as the younger Flavia and Joman Chiang as young Jin. Also, hot new actress Yuan Tian turns in one of the film's best performances as Xiao Ye. She easily extracts the open sexuality, the raw attraction and the straightforward honesty found within the character and brings those qualities to the surface. Eric Kot also does a fine turn as cuckolded husband Ming in what could easily have been a thankless part.
At 2 hours, BUTTERFLY is overlong and overwritten. An excellent film could have been made by taking the flashbacks, making them the main story and telling it in a linear fashion and then flashing forward to see what happened to their characters and what the impact of their life choices would be.
Years ago, John Sayles made a film called LIANNA about married woman with children who has a lesbian affair and leaves her husband and children for her new partner. That film understood that Life is partly based on choices we make and that those choices may be hard, tragic even fatal but these choices have to be dealt with honesty and clarity (even if people don't always perform in this fashion)
BUTTERFLY wants the audience to believe that its characters are making choices but what they are really doing are fulfilling plot points and executing the contrived emotions implicit in the screenplay.
That just doesn't fly with me.
